Game 7: Phoenix will not have Roenick, but Ducks are still wary.

It has come down to a seventh game.

There will be speed and desperate scrambles, jarring hits and season-saving saves tonight at the Pond when the Mighty Ducks and Phoenix Coyotes decide which team’s season is over and which team will play on.

But there will be no Jeremy Roenick in the lineup for Phoenix after an MRI revealed a torn ligament in the left knee he injured Sunday during the Ducks’ overtime victory in Game 6 of the Western Conference quarterfinal series.

Roenick’s absence leaves the Coyotes without one of their leading scorers, and more important, without the player who has defended the Ducks’ Paul Kariya as well as anyone can for most of the series.

“For sure it will be a loss for them,” the Ducks’ Teemu Selanne said. “I think Roenick has played really well against Paul, and that whole checking line has played so well against us. I really hope it helps Paul’s game.

“[But] there is no easy way out. If he’s not in the lineup, we can’t think about that. We can only think about what we need to do well. It doesn’t matter who you play against.”

Roenick, who was injured when the Ducks’ Ted Drury barreled into him while trying to steal the puck, has been knocked out of the playoffs because of a knee injury for the second time in three years.

He hurt the same knee in a collision with Dallas’ Derian Hatcher while playing for Chicago late in the 1995 season, returning late in the playoffs after missing 15 games.

Roenick wouldn’t leave the arena to be examined Sunday until the game ended, and he arrived in Anaheim with the team Monday.

“I know if one of my guys was out and it was the same kind of case, I’d be saying, ‘Let’s win one for him,’ ” Roenick said. “I’m sure it’s the same the other way.”

Duck Coach Ron Wilson doesn’t want his team to relax merely because Roenick won’t play.

“They’re 7-3 without J.R.,” Wilson said. “That’s not to lessen his importance to their hockey team, but they’re very capable of winning without him.

“Keith Tkachuk is a warrior, and he doesn’t want to lose. Cliff Ronning has been to the finals. Mike Gartner has had a great career. Somebody’s got to step up and get the job done in Jeremy’s absence.”

Phoenix Coach Don Hay, who largely retracted his initial accusation that Drury’s hit was “a cheap shot,” was mum about who will take over the defensive role played by Roenick, who also had two goals and four assists in the first five games.

“We probably have to shut them down more by committee than with one player,” Hay said.

While Phoenix tries to recover from the double blow of losing Roenick and a chance to wrap up the series when it lost Game 6 at home, the Ducks have new life after Kariya’s brilliant overtime goal staved off elimination.

“Only a great hockey player like Paul Kariya could finish off like he did,” said Wilson, who called Selanne’s long, high flip pass to Kariya “like a long bomb in football.”

The pass had elements of luck, but the shot saved the Ducks’ season.

“If you can’t enjoy that, you’re not alive,” Wilson said. “How many people even get that opportunity: to stare down the barrel of the gun? Our guys didn’t flinch.”

That was a crucial element of Sunday’s victory after the Ducks lost their composure in Game 4, when a goal was disallowed; and in Game 5, when their defense collapsed.

In Game 6, they were steady before giving up two third-period goals, and they found two new tactics that worked: turning their forechecking system into more of a neutral zone trap and trying to find space for Kariya and Selanne with long flip passes and dump-ins.

“The feeling shouldn’t be any different than it was in Phoenix,” Wilson said. “Our backs are still against the wall. That doesn’t change. . . . Your team has to win in order to continue playing.

“Phoenix will rebound as we’ve rebounded. It’s going to be a great game.”

Seventh games usually are, not that either of these teams has much experience with them.

The Phoenix franchise was 0-2 in seventh games as the Winnipeg Jets, and the Ducks are making their first playoff appearance.

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the series has gone seven games, because the Ducks and Coyotes were separated by only two points at the end of the regular season.

Those two points are the reason the Ducks are playing the final game at the Pond.

“We played all those games to get home-ice advantage. Now it’s going to pay off,” Duck goalie Guy Hebert said.

Since 1939, the home team has won 67.4% of seventh games.

But veterans of seventh games say home-ice advantage is not as important in the final game as in the earlier games.

“A Game 7 is independent of the first six,” said the Ducks’ Ken Baumgartner. “To get to Game 7, you have to be evenly matched teams, or it would have been over by now.”

Jari Kurri has played in 191 playoff games, but only six seventh games. His Edmonton dynasty teams weren’t often pushed that far.

Defenseman J.J. Daigneault also has played in six Game 7s--one a loss in the deciding game of the 1987 Stanley Cup finals against Edmonton when he was playing for Philadelphia.

“During a series, it’s all building up,” Daigneault said. “Teams get to know each other, they get to know each other’s style. By the seventh game, it’s the team that wants it most. It’s usually pretty close.

“Usually, the team that makes the least mistakes will win the game. I don’t think you’ll see many two-on-ones or three-on-twos. It’s important for us to play the same as we did in Game 6 in Phoenix.”

After tonight, the winner will play either Colorado or Detroit in the conference semifinals beginning Friday or Saturday. The pairings depend on the seventh game of the Dallas-Edmonton series tonight, because the NHL reseeds teams after the first round. An Edmonton upset would mean the Phoenix-Anaheim winner would play Detroit instead of Colorado.

One team’s season will be over.

“You hate to say it, but usually teams change over the course of the summer,” Wilson said. “It’s possibly the last time we could all be together fighting for a common cause.

“But we look at this as just one step. If we win, we’ve got at least four more games.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

MIGHTY DUCKS vs. PHOENIX

Tonight’s

Game 7

* Site: Pond of Anaheim

* Time: 7:30

* TV: Fox Sports West, Fox Sports West 2